System Recovers Ethanol from Wastewater Facilities

Company estimates it could recover $400M a year from wastewater in U.S. ethanol facilities.

Apr 22, 2011

R3 Fusion Inc., a clean technology company based in Rensselaer Technology Park, has delivered its first commercial system for recovering ethanol from waste scrubber water – the SPaCeR. Using principles of process intensification, the system is designed to process 50 gallons per minute of scrubber water generated from a 50 MM gallon per annum ethanol plant. The company has already begun discussions with other ethanol plant operators for implementation of this technology.

According to Dr. Roshan Jachuck, the inventor of the SPaCeRT technology and CTO of R3 Fusion, “We estimate that over $400 million of ethanol can be recovered each year from the wastewater in U.S. ethanol facilities alone. The unique engineering and process technology incorporated in our systems provides, to our knowledge, the most economical, energy efficient means available to capture that critical element of our national energy equation.”

Herb Goodman, a veteran executive of the international oil and gas industry, commented, “R3 Fusion has an important and timely solution to what most knowledgeable people understand will almost certainly be the greatest problem the world is beginning to face".

The SPaCeRT technology was developed to address the increasing challenge in fresh water supply. With less than 1 percent of the planet’s water available as fresh water for human use, the need to reuse, recycle, and remediate contaminated and wastewater streams is becoming critical. Furthermore, identifying new approaches to reliable, energy-efficient desalination of seawater and brackish water has become a focus of numerous organizations around the globe.

“We are very excited about the launch of our SPaCeR technology and the enormous implications we believe it will have on global water supplies” said Keith Blakely, R3 Fusion’s CEO. “The interconnectedness of our water, energy, and environmental challenges is well-established and a system like ours that addresses all three simultaneously is, we believe, of great importance to the future of our planet.”